A small moment of transparency here: I hate change so, so much. It seems strange coming from a person who is willingly abandoning everything for a year full of almost nothing but changes, but its true.
In the last month, I graduated college, said goodbye to some of my best friends who I will not see for years, left my job at the University, been faced with changes in my family, been incredibly aware of the $10,000 I still need to raise, and, for the first time, really realized I will be leaving EVERYTHING I know completely behind for a year to do this World Race thing.
Big changes!!!
Change makes me anxious. And if there is one thing I’ve learned about anxiety through my life, it’s got no place in the Christian heart. Everyone knows Jesus’s view on anxiety in Matthew 6:25-34 (“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”), and Paul’s encouragement and promise in Philippians 4:6-7, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Yet, I am faced with change and the sneaky anxiety that is attached to it. I have felt myself wanting to slide back into my old ways of dealing with change; that is, to not deal with it, run away, and go to sleep. But things are different now. I am different now.
In the last year and a half, God has been preparing me for something. He brought me to a place of complete brokenness and faithfully picked those pieces back up, and put me back together into a new creation– someone emotionally strong, willing to do what’s difficult, and reliant on His strength. She does not have time to worry because she’s too busy looking forward to the next place The Lord will take her.
Sometimes, I have trouble being her even though I know she is the one who He created me to be for this season– the one who He prepared for the World Race.
Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Esther. She was, certainly, someone who had reason to be anxious, but she chose to be faithful to God instead. Mordecai encourages her in 4:14, a verse that has encouraged me recently, “for if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Maybe God brought me to a time of change such as this to prepare me for the year of change to come. It’s not my time to keep silent, neither now nor come October when I launch. This is a season of action and trust. So, I’m pressing in to Him because, in times like this when so much is out of my hands, it’s all I can do. Despite the discomfort of right now, maybe this is exactly where I need to be.
